Baidu Music Suffers from Copyright Issue

October 2114:002016

Baidu Music, gone for two years, was condemned by musicians and web users for copyright issue just at the moment it came back. On October 18, 2016, Baidu music held a conference, announced its newest strategy and launched a new version.

Right after the conference, on October 19, the music critic Sanshi Yisheng disclosed on his Sina Weibo that there is still pirated music within Baidu music and criticized Baidu music for its disrespect to musicians. Here is his weibo post: “I believed in this industry many people’s phones were refreshed by the news of ‘New Strategy Launch Conference of Baidu Music’ yesterday. I have to say, any troublemaker should respect every piece of effort made by the musicians and the precious progress we have made in this industry (e.g. the more and more mature mode of pay for downloading). We really can’t afford go back to free music time, which will only make the music valueless for those musicians who just saw the light. I’m honestly asking Baidu music to clear up pirated music, then go on with your development plan.”

In the meantime, many web users found that Baidu is still providing service of streaming and downloading music without being authorized with the copyrights, which was greatly condemned all over the internet and makes people believe that Baidu music is bringing pirated music back.

Copyright issue of Baidu music is actually a historical problem. When it was still Baidu MP3, it was condemned by the whole industry for its copyright issue. A couple of record companies and copyright institutions in and abroad used to issue a joint statement that Baidu Music should disable its downloading service which almost destroyed the business of Chinese music industry. However, it was condemned again for the copyright issue after it was back. No wonder Baidu is the biggest pirated platform in China.